Tabs

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Car Crazy!

I've always been seriously disinterested in vehicles, preferring to 'let someone else handle all that'. Well, that hasn't always worked out and I must admit I've been a weenie about the whole thing. Here in Texas that's a bad habit, you need a good reliable vehicle-the places you need to be are long distances from one another and public transportation is almost nonexistent.At one point I didn't even know where the titles were, it drove me crazy whenever I had to find them. And that was enough of that.Don had already made sure each vehicle has tire gauge, jumper cables, a good spare, tire inflation compressor, a good jack and blocks/chocks, tire tool, extra oil and a gallon of water. He showed me how to check the engine oil, transmission fluid, power steering fluid, brake fluid, battery, engine coolant and windshield washer fluid.Now that we have 3 decent, reliable vehicles I realize how important regular service is. The reason my car and the Band Van are in good shape is that they've been well cared-for by the former owners. I searched all over for a way to get all my info together and handy and didn't find much, so I created THIS SPREADSHEET, you can use the template if you like and add categories as you please.

I still have some info to gather and I'm also going to scan the receipts, upload them to Google Drive and link the entries in 'Service/Part' to each document. It took awhile but more organized means less crazy.

I also want to have the vehicles much cleaner than they have been so I set up a Google Calendar just for cleaning and maintenance. My car is most used so I wipe the dust out once a week, wash every two weeks and vacuum once a month. The van gets dusted and washed once a month and Don's work truck, well...we'll see. Inspections and registration dates go there so I get notifications about them by email.

Seems like a lot of work now, but I'll bet it'll make me happier in the future.